NEW: "2025" - Chapter 4

What Happens Without School Vaccine Mandates

BREAKING: A telling thing happened yesterday. Donald Trump figured out that Project 2025 was toxic. So he’s trying to distance himself. But as numerous commentators noted, that’s an impossible task. He’s inextricably linked to the plan.

Trump IS Project 2025!

But if he’s this desperate, it means we’re on the right track. Amid a chaotic election, making the horrors of Trump’s and Project 2025’s promises as real as possible for Americans is a key step toward victory.

Which is why I started writing “2025” last month—to break it down to everyday lives. To make it real—because that’s often how people best understand things, as opposed to facts and figures and talking points…

Thank you to all who have started reading it, and all who have shared it. It’s truly taking off.

You can read the opening chapters here:

Introduction and Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Now, Onto…

Chapter 4

April

Capitol Monthly

“Stephanie Morris”

by Rose Cunningham

Denver

“Mom, there’s a new girl at school who’s just the nicest,” Mimi said as she looked up from her bowl of Rice Krispies. “Can she come over and play sometime? Maybe spend the night?”

Steph Morris, who was standing at the kitchen sink rinsing the coffee cup she’d just emptied—twice—flinched for a split second, then kept scrubbing.

Three months ago, Mimi’s question would’ve been a simple one.

Now, it wasn’t simple at all.

Which is why she bit down on her lip as she scrubbed the coffee cup longer than necessary.

Buying time.

“I’m so glad you’ve made a new friend at school, honey…”

Steph wasn’t just a mom at Cherry Fork Middle School.

She was Cherry Fork Middle School.

She’d gone through every grade of the Cherry Fork system, capping it off as cheerleading captain and prom queen.

With her long morning runs and healthy diet, she was as slim now as she’d ever been. But her age was revealing itself in other ways. Her wavy, blonde hair back then was now a straight brown bob tinged with gray.  A few wrinkles replaced her spotless tan skin from those teen years. And cat-eye glasses obscured the sky blue eyes that drew oodles of attention from the boys back in the day.

But even with those slight changes, she remained the center of attention at school. For an entirely different reason.

After earning her nursing degree at U of C, she’d returned to serve as Cherry Fork Middle School’s nurse, and had been there ever since. They’d added the elementary school to her nursing footprint, piled on a few other administrative duties along the way, and she began coaching high school volleyball and basketball five years ago. The coaching reconnected her with kids who’d bawled as she tended to their scraped knees and tummy aches, now all grown up and strong. It warmed her heart knowing that she’d helped get them there.

Things grew more complicated when her son and two daughters grew old enough to attend Cherry Fork.  Not just juggling the demands of working full-time as a single, divorced mom—prom king turned out to be a dirt bag husband and absentee dad. But because every once in a while, being a good school nurse and a good mom—“Nurse Stephanie,” as the kids called her at school, versus “Mom Stephanie,” as she referred to herself at home—came into conflict.

“.…What’s her name?”

As Cherry Fork’s lifelong cheerleader, she’d always been thrilled to welcome new kids to school, not to mention a new friend into their home. So she tried to sound enthusiastic.

But Mimi’s question tapped into a dilemma that the school board, teachers and the administration had been wrestling with for months. And as the school’s nurse, Steph was the point person on all of it.

“Her name’s Ellie! She’s as nice as can be. Everybody likes her.”

Steph nodded.

Mrs. Weatherby, Mimi’s fifth grade homeroom teacher, had mentioned that all three new fifth grade girls had fit right in, bringing a welcome spark to the home stretch of a school year already made endless by all the awful politics. Painful, polarizing politics about books. About history. About bathrooms. And most recently, about basic health care.

“Which one is she?” Steph asked, turning to look back at her daughter.

Sighing at the sight.

Mimi really was a spitting image of how she’d looked at that age. The only difference was how hip her daughter was to the latest trends.  After a night in heatless curlers, waves of light blond hair fell below Mimi’s shoulders. She wore no eye makeup yet, but her face glowed with tinted moisturizer and her lips shined with gloss. Beaded bracelets adorned both wrists, advertising  all the optimism of an 11-year old: “Friends,” “GrlPower,” and “Believe.” And she looked like a fashion plate with her cropped blue sweatshirt, black leggings, and high-top Jordans. A Lululemon crossbody handbag lay at the ready, a foot from her cereal bowl.

“She’s got black hair. And long bangs. A little shorter than me. Always wears colorful hoop earrings, a heart pendant, and a jean jacket. I already told her where to get the bracelets.”

Steph nodded. Ellie stuck out in the hallway. Striking wide blue eyes under those bangs. Fair skin with a tinge of pink. Cute button nose. That jean jacket. And always beaming. More than any new arrival she could remember, she was surrounded by friends within days. A blossoming social butterfly. Reminded her of her when she was little.

“Yes. She seems really sweet.”

“She really is. Can she come over, mom? Please!”

Steph stared out the kitchen window, her wrinkled brow exposed in the reflection.

She’d handled all the paperwork for the flood of new kids, from kindergarten to sixth grade. Ellie included. And it wasn’t good.

No one in Greater Denver appreciated the danger of it all more than she did. And her own daughter had just called the question.

“Let me think about it.  And I’ll check with her parents.”

Her stomach quivered.

If it were Sam or Joanie, her other two kids, she’d fret less about the risk. But it was Mimi asking. For ten years, Steph had been on permanent high alert when it came to Mimi’s health.

At the same time, raising a daughter was challenging enough without vetoing new friends based on a long-ago nightmare.

Mimi slurped down the remaining milk from the bowl, then finished off her orange juice.

“Is that a maybe?” she asked, as she did whenever she sensed victory was near.

Steph grinned into the window. A look Mimi clearly saw in the reflection.

“Yes, dear. A maybe."

* * *

It was a rule Steph learned early on, which became even more clear-cut during COVID: when Nurse Stephanie looked worried, everyone worried.

Happy nurse, happy school, became her credo.

So no matter her mood, she’d always walk into school with a smile on her face, joyously greeting kids and teachers alike.

She did so this morning as well, entering from the faculty lot after dropping Mimi and her siblings off out front.

But her “happy nurse” facade disappeared once she closed the door to her small, square office.

It wasn’t the conversation with Mimi now weighing her down.

“I’ll check with her parents,” she’d told her daughter, right before leaving for school.

Her parents.

Recent conversations with Ellie’s and the other new parents were now replaying through her head. And stressing her out all over again.

The beginning of the school year used to be tough enough. While teachers prepared lesson plans and arranged their classrooms for 20 new kids, Steph was solely responsible for a chaotic process involving every child and family—running around in the final weeks of summer and first days of school ensuring that all kids had their required immunizations. That meant tracking down and reviewing the records of hundreds of families. When an immunization was missing, as they often were, it meant reaching out to parents, hoping it was just an oversight or data error, which usually was the case. Sometimes the parents didn’t have the records, which meant she’d have to track those down from their doctors.

The worst case scenario was that the missing immunization wasn’t an error. The child had not received the required vaccine. And this is when things sometimes went south.

Least problematic was the tense conversation with busy parents that their child needed to get a shot quick or wouldn’t be able to start school. Most hurried to get it done. Problem solved.

But in recent years—ever since COVID and the onset of the crazier politics—more questioned whether they needed the missing shot at all. They’d read something or seen something online saying it was dangerous, or ineffective, so was it really necessary? Or they asked about exceptions they’d heard about in other school districts and states. She’d patiently explain the prevention benefits and safety of the vaccine in question, but always had the mandate to fall back on. And Colorado provided only narrow medical exceptions to that mandate, which helped keep everyone safer. Some pushed back further, but she usually got the job done. Every once in a while, an angry parent would call the principal. But consecutive principals always had Steph’s back.

In all her years of nursing, only two families had left the school in a dispute over vaccinations. A tiny price to pay for a nationwide net of protection that had revolutionized health and dramatically extended American lifespans over the prior century.

“The good old days,” she said outloud as she sat down behind her desk and let out a long breath.

That’s how she and her network of Denver school nurses now referred to their frenzied start-of-school process. Because it was gone. And for reasons having nothing to do with health.

Of all people, the new president of the United States had turned it all upside down.

It had struck her as nuts when she first heard it—his vague campaign promise to stop funding schools with vaccine mandates. Even though he repeated it in almost every speech, she never took it seriously. Just trying to win votes. Why would anyone want to reverse a century of progress? Or endanger kids? Or shut down schools?

Then in mid-January, he issued the order imposing the very insanity he’d promised—rescinding federal funding to any school in America that required vaccines. Not just COVID vaccines, but all vaccines.

From campaign hot air to the law of the land in one day.

Just as bad, the order gave states and school districts just 60 days to make their choice. Unable to take the financial hit, states scrambled to rescind their vaccination requirements, leaving it up to each school district. And almost every school board in America chose to comply, including Cherry Fork.

Steph and her fellow nurses had watched it all, horrified. By the decision, and the reckless rush to implement it.

The most direct personal impact was that it canceled Steph and the kids’ spring break plans. Too much to do to get ready.

Far worse, it gutted her role as the guardian of kids’ health at Cherry Fork.

Before the order, she diplomatically enforced clear rules ensuring kids were vaccinated and healthy, with the occasional testy conversation she’d grown skilled at navigating.

That old job felt like child’s play now.

Without a mandate backing her up, her job now was pure persuasion—an odd combination of health cheerleader and unctuous saleswoman of common sense prevention. But without any real leverage to keep the school safe.

Worse, her sales pitch was largely aimed at families living in anti-vax conspiracy land, arriving at the school pre-triggered about the very topic she planned to discuss. It brought her back to cheerleading days, when the squad tried to win over the opposing sides’ fans. That led to playful boos back in high school—and angry boos now.

Immediately.

After the announcement, 18 families informed the school that they’d be enrolling their kids the first day after the March spring break. And from the first appointment on, the heights of her new uphill battle became clear.

In the good old days, when parents discussed health matters with her, they saw and heard a health professional giving the best health advice she could. And they listened closely.  Respectfully. “Nurse Stephanie” was one of the most trusted figures at the entire school. An anchor.

The new families?

All they heard was…politics. Politics they hated. Politics they dismissed.

Ironically, Steph had never been into politics. She voted for candidates of both sides over the years, and never watched political shows. But now she found herself politicized, all for doing the medical work she’d always done. And there was nothing she could say to these parents to change that. She now understood why the school district had lost two librarians in three years.

Even gathering basic information about what immunizations the new students had received proved nettlesome.

“Diphtheria?” she’d ask, seated in a small conference room with wide-eyed parents, usually in a public school for the first time.

“No,” a parent would say.

Steph would write a “No” next to Diphtheria on the list attached to her clipboard.

“Meningitis?” she’d ask of kids twelve or older.

“Nope.”

Another “No” on the list.

“Hepatitis-A?”

The parents’ impatience grew. Signaled through a huff, or an eyeroll.

“No.”

Steph did her best to maintain a flat, judgment-free expression—a hint of a grin, an occasional nod of the head.

“Hepatitis-B?”

“No!”

Some parents answered “no” not because they knew their child wasn’t immunized for the particular disease, but because they’d never been immunized for any disease. Lost expressions communicated that. Looks around the room. Shrugs. Answers that trailed off.

But a few openly explained it.

“Rotavirus?” she’d asked one mother, reading from her list.

“Honey, I don’t know what that one is, but he’s never had any of them. You can just mark no all the way down.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Stanley is no pin cushion.”

So Steph marked the entire list, “No.”

Then there were the parents who wouldn’t answer at all.

“Measles?” she’d asked one burly father with a thick beard.

“You asking all this stuff…doesn’t this violate HIPAA?” he asked, eyes narrow, cocking his head. “This is all our private information, isn’t it?”

“This is to keep your child and others safe. I’ll just assume it’s a no if you don’t want to answer.”

The man glared at her in silence.

“Chicken pox?”

Silence. She marked down “No” again.

“Rubella?”

More silence. A more intense glare. Another no.

Her list ended on the two best-known vaccines.

“COVID?”

“Hell to the no,” one mother said, swiping her hand in front of her.

“Are you kidding me?” one father asked.

“Never!” another mother practically yelled, then laughed out loud. “Are masks next?”

For the final vaccine, Steph modified her tone.

“And did you get this year’s flu shot?”

To her surprise, a few answered yes. But the majority still said no, although with less hostility.

As she completed the list, she braced herself, usually taking a long sip from her ever-present water bottle. Because the toughest part of each session was about to begin.

A minefield of her own choosing.

She and her fellow Denver nurses had made a collective commitment. Most of these folks had never heard anyone—let alone a nurse—explain the health benefits of vaccines to them. They’d only been exposed to the opposite, so they had no idea how at-risk their kids were. They had no idea that children die very year just from the basic flu.

Over several calls, the nurses decided they had a responsibility to make the case. Their job was to protect kids’ health, and that now included these new kids and their families. So they would walk through the benefits of vaccines even though they weren’t required to.

It turned out, sticking a fork in an electric socket was more fun. And effective.

“Can I ask you what you know about measles, and the vaccine?” Steph would ask, mentioning a disease she thought parents would want to hear about.

“Oh, don’t start with me lady,” one father said, slumping back in his chair.

“Is this the part where you try to convince us to stick our kids with your poison?” a mom asked.

“Move on, ma’am,” another man said, his wife nodding. “We’re not here for a lecture from you. The President said we could come here without vaccines, and that’s what we’re doing.”

A few plunged down the rabbit hole of anti-vaccination propaganda they’d been fed somewhere. Steph listened politely to a wide variety of wild theories, maintaining a poker face as they went on, then wrapped up those sessions quickly. Nothing was going to change their minds.

For those who didn’t push back on her short measles explanation, she’d proceed to other maladies.

But parents’ patience ran out within minutes.

“Listen, we’re not going to do vaccines. Never have, never will,” one said. “You’re wasting your breath, and our time.”

Another leaned forward. “Is this really part of your job? Getting into our private business. We know what’s best for our son, and it’s not injecting him with those drugs. We’re about freedom.”

She’d usually stop after two or three such objections. No point in riling them up any further. Other Denver nurses had been yelled at as they tried to get through the list. A couple dads had come close to violence and were escorted out of school buildings.

A few couples were polite enough to let her finish, quietly looking around the room as she explained how the responsible use of vaccines had wiped out once-deadly or disfiguring diseases. It was a mixture of health and history that her network of nurses had worked on together. Still, even that high point of her little briefing broke through with almost no one.

From dozens of meetings, she convinced three families to take the flu vaccine. But unlike the past, she had no way to confirm they would. Still, five potentially safer kids from those three families were better than none.

But the pit in her stomach from those first few appointments had never faded. She knew too much.

It grew even larger when the 26 kids of those parents arrived four days ago.

As the school’s hallways teemed with ever more students, all she could think about were those sessions. And the list of vaccinations she’d reviewed in each one:

Measles?

No.

Chicken Pox?

No.

Hepatis-A?

No.

Twenty-six new kids walking into an already crowded school, protected from none of them. Potentially spreaders of any of them.

The good news was that with just a handful of kids granted medical exemptions, everyone else at school was vaccinated from all these potential ailments.

The bad news was that some of the grown-ups—teachers, administrators, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and others—had medical conditions that made them vulnerable even though they’d been vaccinated at some point.

That’s why six teachers had quit in March once the school board announced it would bow to the federal order.  They’d all cried together the last Friday before spring break. Great colleagues, lost. Decades of experience, gone. But they weren’t just stepping away from Cherry Fork. They would never teach in a school again.

Five long-time bus drivers and three janitors also left, forcing the school to scramble to fill the void by the end of Spring Break.

All walked away because they had autoimmune disorders or sickle cell anemia or an immune system weakened by cancer, and their doctors had rightfully warned them they were vulnerable to infection.

Other staff with the same susceptibility couldn’t afford to leave, so they remained. Some visited Steph’s office and explained their condition, and she offered guidance to keep them safe. Most she talked to returned from spring break wearing masks. And she welcomed them back with cleaning products in each of their classrooms.

But as much as she cared for her colleagues, they weren’t Steph’s primary concern.

Because the worse news was the far greater number of kids in the school who she knew had similar health conditions, making them as vulnerable as school staff. For some diseases, far more so.

Measles?

No.

Chicken Pox?

No.

Hepatitis-A?

No.

Just one of those “nos,” from one of those families, could result in the infection of any of the other unvaccinated kids now walking those hallways, along with the high-risk autoimmune kids she’d kept safe all these years.

In Steph’s mind, they were all dry kindling, piled on top of one another—which made a single infection a dangerous spark, threatening rapid spread.

Using an Excel spreadsheet, she’d calculate the odds of each disease potentially afflicting a school. Measles was the most likely, with outbreaks having happened around the country in recent years. The flu, of course. Always there—always deadly for some. She read up on the others.

The odds for an individual school remained low overall, she assured herself, especially if everyone followed her prevention measures. She’d added sanitizer dispensers throughout school hallways. She’d posted bold reminders to wash hands in every bathroom, and entering the cafeteria. And she’d made masks available—although no one but the vulnerable teachers and cafeteria workers used them.

But across entire states and the nation, odds were high that some schools would see outbreaks in the coming weeks, and again in the fall. The flood of new kids all at once was just too much, joining other new kids, plus “old” kids and staff with health vulnerabilities. Dry kindling piled everywhere. Even low odds, multiplied across all those bodies and all those ailments, meant people were about to get sick.

Once vaccination rates fell from 95% or so, down to the 70s or lower, the math was brutally predictable.

Which meant that soon, one of the nurses in her network would reach out, sounding the alarm. And their network would respond with all the strategies they’d used during COVID—triage the problem through contract tracing, testing, informing parents of the spread, and shutting down if things got bad enough.

Adding it all up, Steph figured school outbreaks were about to become a national story, even if odds were low for Cherry Fork Middle School.

But as she sat in her empty, quiet office now, that didn’t make her feel any better.

Because she was particularly attuned to even a low risk for one other reason.

Not because she was Nurse Stephanie.

But because she was Mom Stephanie—haunted by a searing memory.

At age two, Mimi had gotten so sick, she’d almost died. What seemed like a mild cold and cough had exploded into a 106-degree temperature and a cascade of alarming symptoms that led to a rush to Denver’s children’s hospital and a ventilator. The look of Mimi in that little hospital bed, buried under all that equipment, chest undulating as she fought to breathe, had broken Steph’s heart for four straight days.

And that’s when doctors first diagnosed Mimi’s autoimmune disease, which made her highly vulnerable to every illness on Steph’s list.

* * *

The next Tuesday, from the same office, Steph led the first regional triage call among Denver school nurses. It felt like COVID all over again, all of them joining together to help a colleague in need.

Spring break for East Denver Schools had ended in late March, before most other school districts, giving the school a head start on infection. The lead nurse of East Denver told the group that several days back, three teachers had first shown cold-like symptoms—congestion, watery eyes and a runny nose. A day later, three of the new unvaccinated kids became equally sick, along with two auto-immune kids. All third graders.

A day later, their fevers had all spiked. With their entire bodies fatigued, the sick teachers went home. And then came the symptom that stuck out from either a bad cold or the flu.

“They’ve got a persistent, raking, hacking cough,’ the young East Denver nurse explained. “Two kids vomited in the bathroom, and a teacher did the same in the faculty lounge.”

Steph nodded, guessing where this was going.

“Most of their coughs are followed by a high-pitched intake of air.”

And that was the tip-off.

The next day, tests confirmed the hunch Steph and other nurses had shared on the call. East Denver had a whooping cough outbreak, and had to shut down. Too many teachers reported in sick and substitutes kept turning down last-minute assignments to fill in.

“If it’s already happening in East Denver, this is going to get ugly fast,” Steph said on a call Thursday morning. The math was inevitable, as her calculations had shown.

She was right.

Stories from beyond Colorado popped up all week—first in newspapers, then the local news, then the nightly news. Like a rolling wave, each day brought more stories.  And fear.

The Denver nurses started meeting on a 7:30 Zoom each morning. Checking in on one another. Sharing best practices, and what they were hearing. It was hard to keep up.

Measles broke out in schools in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas. Whooping cough in Oklahoma and Florida. Both flu and COVID outbreaks rolled through dozens of states around the country. Chicken pox in six states. A middle school in Virginia had to shut down due to meningitis.

There was even a polio scare in Kalamazoo, Michigan. National networks broke into afternoon programming to report the news. Live video of parents rushing to the school to get their kids home safe aired around the country. Parents interviewed, in tears. Tests later that evening proved negative.

Unlike COVID, most outbreaks did not envelop entire schools. And reporters were quick to report this fact.  The adults and kids who were most at risk were “just” those with pre-existing conditions. Or because they were old. Or overweight. Or infants at home.

Steph fumed whenever those “it’s not so bad” narratives aired. It reminded her of the loose talk during COVID, from the White House down. As if the fact that it “mostly affected seniors” somehow made things not so bad. Here, millions of Americans had the very conditions making them vulnerable, Mimi included. And too many sick adults—teachers, bus drivers, and staff—meant schools were shutting down for days or weeks.

And unlike COVID, where the entire response—from national to local—could be geared toward one infection, the current crisis involved a wide assortment of vastly different diseases.  No community could predict which they’d be hit with, making prevention, testing and containment far more complex.

On cue—because again, the math was brutally predictive—fatalities began to rise, as you’d expect once even small percentages are multiplied by an ever increasing number of infected kids and staff.

Two students in New York were the first. Not vaccinated for this year’s flu strain. Dead.

A cafeteria worker in Florida. Measles, which had developed into encephalitis.

Measles cases in Minnesota, Ohio and Utah killed three more when they triggered septic shock. Two unvaccinated kids. Another who’d been vaccinated, but had a weak immune system due to an early bout with cancer.

Flu and COVID deaths grew. Single digits. Then double digits.

The nightly news shared their faces and names, along with gut-wrenching videos of bawling parents. Unlike COVID, young people made up a large percentage of the highly sick or dead, which was traumatizing moms and dads across the country.

Another crisis was also brewing. One in five measles cases ended up in the hospital, and intensive care for some. Since measles was spreading the fastest, this 20% figure was forcing the entire medical and hospital community to scramble for beds.

Add it all up, and the President’s January order had triggered a countdown on countless time bombs across the country, and now they were exploding everywhere.

And more were ticking.

Some of the worst potential diseases, such as forms of Hepatitis, took longer to spread, and show symptoms.

But Steph knew, they had to be coming too.

* * *

There was no more quiet time in Steph’s little office. Not a moment to relax.

She spent hours gathering the latest news and implementing every prevention measure she could. She constantly fine-tuned her response plan in case Cherry Fork were hit. She had frequent calls with other nurses and state health officials—the old federal health experts were nowhere to be found.  As the news got worse by the day, panicked phone calls from parents flooded her office. Parents of at-risk kids called daily.  Worried teachers and staff stopped by asking similar questions—most of them had kids too.

Her new goals were simple: keep everyone calm and careful, and steer clear of an infection until summer, when they could all regroup with a better plan.

She now eyed the calendar as a scoreboard, chalking up each completed week as a victory.

Six weeks left in the school year, when East Denver had its outbreak, all was clear at Cherry Fork.

“We’re ok,” she assured the callers. “Nothing yet.”

On Tuesday of the fifth week, two fourth graders complained of cold systems, but that’s all they turned out to be.

“We’re still ok,” she assured the callers. “Nothing yet. Just make sure your child follows all our precautions.”

A few kids started wearing masks, as did more teachers. The sanitizer dispensers had to be refilled far more often.

But the national avalanche of infection only picked up more steam. Some parents stopped calling and just took their kids out of school.

“Early summer break,” they’d say.

Missed weeks of education, Steph thought. Tragic.

Thursday of that fifth week, a fifth grader showed up at her door after lunch.  One of the new kids. Mimi’s grade, although not her class. Steph’s heart raced, but that too turned out to be just a mild cold.

“We’re almost at summer,” she assured the parents, as well as the teachers who checked in in person. “We’re almost home. No sign of infection.”

Friday, she sent an all-school email to all parents and staff.

“Keep doing what you’re doing. We’re going to make it.”

All her planning and precautions appeared to be working.

They hit the last week in April.

Week Four — four to go.

Tuesday afternoon.

Another knock.

On a call, Steph opened the door. Her jaw clenched at the sight.

“I’ve got to go,” she told the nurse on the line, speaking so quickly she ate the words.

Standing in front of her, grim-faced, was Mrs. Weatherby, Mimi’s homeroom teacher.

Next to her stood Ellie, looking cute as can be in her jean jacket and heart pendant. But it was the first time she’d seen Mimi’s new best friend frowning. And her head slightly down, so her bangs almost covered her eyes. And she looked sickly pale.

Steph’s muscles tensed.

“Nurse Steph,” Mrs. Weatherby said in a sad, empathetic voice. She patted Ellie on the shoulder. “Ellie says she’s not feeling well. And she feels pretty warm.”

“You’re not feeling well?” Steph asked, leaning down while using her friendliest voice to mask the panic inside. “Why don’t you sit over here and we can see what’s wrong.”

“Ok.”

“Thank you Mrs. Weatherby.”

As Ellie walked past Steph, the young teacher grimaced in her direction. Shook her head.

“Let me know what you find, and if we need to do anything.”

“Will do,” Steph said, and shut the door.

Ellie sat down in the chair where a generation of Cherry Fork students had sat.

“What feels wrong, Ellie?”

She sat up straight.  Always so polite.

“My throat started hurting a couple days ago. And my nose was running. My parents said it was just a cold. But now I’m coughing too.”

She pulled the sweet girl’s bangs back and placed her palm over Ellie’s head. Definitely warm.

She confirmed it with her thermometer.

103 degrees.

“You’ve definitely got a temperature, sweetie.”

Ellie frowned, but said nothing.

Who knows what doctor’s visits she’d ever had? Many of the new parents didn’t seem to have regular pediatricians.

“Open your mouth for me. And say ‘Ahhhh.’”

At first, nothing stuck out but the red, inflamed back of Ellie’s throat. Clearly from all the coughing.

Then she remembered.

“Do you mind pulling your cheeks to the side?”

With all the outbreaks taking place, Steph had been reading up on how to detect old diseases now making a comeback. Refreshed herself of the physical tell-tales that past nurses and doctors would’ve looked for first, before vaccines had eradicated the need.

As Ellie reached her right hand up to her face, Steph noticed the words on the one beaded bracelet around her right wrist: “Besties.”

She lost her train of thought.  “Hey, Mimi just added that same bracelet.”

Ellie beamed for a moment. “Of course she did! We got them together.”

She then tugged on her right cheek, and Steph immediately noticed them. Just like the pictures she’d reviewed. Tiny white and blue spots on her cheek’s inner lining. A dead giveaway.

She stepped back to take in Ellie’s innocent, round face. Except for how pale she was, nothing else stuck out.

“Ellie, I’m going to look behind your ears for a second. Can you turn to the left?”

Ellie’s lips quivered, clearly getting scared.

“Ok,” she said in a shaky voice.

She turned to her left, and Steph gently twisted the top flap of her ear while pushing her black hair to the side.

Steph’s stomach dropped.

The red, splotchy rash took up the lower half of her ear—a sure sign that Ellie was on the front end of a measles infection.

Kindling, meet spark.

But the nurse in her didn’t panic.

Instead, she immediately began planning out the contract tracing she’d do.  Then she’d notify parents and kids Ellie had interacted with, along with staff and adults.  From COVID, she knew this would trigger alarm and tears, followed by panicked questions. Angry ones too. Despite all her precautions, many would first blame the school nurse. “Happy nurse” would do her best to calm things. She’d also need to notify local hospitals—the 20% hospitalization rate meant they needed to prepare as well.

Nurse Stephanie knew exactly what to do.

But as she looked down at Ellie, another side of her wasn’t calm. Not at all prepared or put together for the news.

No, Mom Stephanie felt nauseous. Her heart was pounding inside. Her legs suddenly weak.

And in her mind, the old image returned—of little Mimi buried under a ventilator, tiny chest heaving, fighting for her life. As vivid now as it had been in that hellish week in intensive care ten years ago.

And it returned because when Nurse Stephanie took the first mental step of contact tracing, she knew where it led.

Into her own home.

It included her kitchen, where they’d eaten dinner and breakfast. Her TV room, where they’d exchanged bracelets. Mimi’s bedroom, where they’d stayed up late talking and giggling, then slept. The bathroom too, Steph recalled, where they’d tried different lip gloss and skincare products, and later brushed their teeth.

Last Friday, she’d allowed Mimi’s new best friend to sleep over. They hadn’t had a single infection at school. The risk had remained low. And Mimi had really wanted it to happen.

So as it always did, Steph's initial “maybe” had turned to “yes.”

And the two besties had an absolutely wonderful time.

_______

Capitol Monthly

“Sandy Krueger”

By Randy Stegman

Denver

Sandy Krueger didn’t know who was more nervous, Ellie or her.

But she definitely knew who was more excited.

Eleven-year old Ellie was absolutely beaming as they drove the ten minutes from their home in suburban Denver to Cherry Fork Middle School.

“Mommy, this is the best day of my life. New friends, new teachers. A new life!”

Sandy looked back in the rear view mirror, her nerves overtaken by joy.  Who doesn’t feel that way seeing her daughter smiling from ear to ear?

But beyond the smile, it was Ellie’s entire look, which she’d spent days perfecting. The new bangs that fell to just above her eyebrows, which Ellie had brushed one last time in the mirror before they’d left.  Her favorite necklace with the heart pendant. The hoop earrings dangling below her raven black hair, which she’d picked out at the store the other day after pacing the aisle for fifteen minutes. The white T-shirt under the new jean jacket they’d also bought for her.

Every detail of her appearance captured Ellie’s excitement about the first day at the new school. At any school.

At the same time, Sandy couldn’t help but feel a sharp pang of hurt.

She had home schooled her two daughters for seven years. Seven years of prepping all those lessons, night after night, week after week. Seven years where most days were consumed with delivering those lessons to two little girls, seated attentively in small desks in their living room. Sandy’s home school duties had been her entire life.

So when Ellie cooed “new teachers” with such glee, Sandy winced. She’d been the math, English, science, history and art teacher all wrapped in one. The “new” teachers were her replacement, and Ellie was excited about them.

Their older daughter had always puzzled Sandy and her husband Will.

Ellie had always seemed happy learning at home. And they’d worked hard to build a healthy social network with other home school kids, along with her church friends.

Still, from early on, Ellie had always craved going to the elementary school in the neighborhood. Then the middle school.

“Mommy,” she’d said, year after year, especially as summers ended. “Why can’t I just go to school like the other kids from the street?”

The home schooling had always proven successful. Ellie was a strong student, and took all her lessons seriously. She’d aced any tests they gave her. Overall, she was a confident and bright kid. Responsible too.

Then again, she’d been an extrovert since about six months’ old. Loved large groups and meeting new friends. Sandy and Will assumed that was the part of her personality that drove her obsession with the neighborhood school.

Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter anymore.

It was happening.

“I’m so happy for you, sweetie,” Sandy said. “Almost there.”

She pulled her black Ford Focus into the right lane of a busy four-lane road, then slowed as she approached the back end of a long line of cars.

As a diverse group of kids crossed the road a few car lengths in front of them, butterflies returned to Sandy’s stomach. These boys and girls looked so much bigger than Ellie. Two of them held phones in their hands. They probably all used social media. Ellie never had.

“And isn’t it great that Jenny and Rhoda are coming to school as well?” Sandy asked, shoring herself up.

A number of other home school students were making the same journey today. For the first time. Jenny and Rhoda had overlapped with Ellie in several activities the local home school community did together. Each had spent the night once.

“It is. But I’m so excited to meet some new friends too.”

“Of course. But it always helps to already know a few kids at a new school.”

Jenny and Rhoda’s parents had also worried about switching to the neighborhood school. But as with Ellie, the two girls were extroverts and wanted to be around the kids from the neighborhood who always talked about how fun school was.  So they’d all agreed to do it together. Comfort in numbers—maybe their little home school crew would stick together.

Plus, they’d had little choice.

There’d been one non-negotiable that had kept Sandy and Will from sending Ellie to the school. But that one obstacle was now off the table—thanks to the most powerful man in the nation.

On the one hand, they agreed with the decision. It was consistent with their own beliefs. Forcing people to inject their kids with dangerous vaccines was just wrong, so they’d always refused to do it.

Sandy was just 21 when they’d married, and didn’t know much about vaccines.  But Will, 31, had been insistent. He considered himself an expert, and had shown her websites outlining the danger of these vaccines to the kids they planned to have.  And a lot of the politicians he liked said the same thing.

So even when they’d first married, they were committed to home schooling to avoid the vaccination requirements of the local school. Will had learned even more about the vaccine problem since, getting the latest updates on-line and through a What’s App group he was part of. Sandy never looked into it much, but COVID seemed to prove him right.

When the president, as a candidate, had announced that he would eliminate federal funding for schools that required vaccines, they’d cheered. Vindication that they’d been right all along.

Then, after he won, he followed through and actually did what he promised. Two months later—weeks ago—the local school announced their response: no more vaccine requirements.  All kids from the community could go there.

Which put Sandy and Will in an impossible situation.

The obstacle that had always kept Ellie from going to the local school was gone.

And their bubbly, boisterous daughter would no longer take no for an answer. She started asking about it the minute the school made the announcement.

Not only that, she didn’t want to wait for the Fall. She wanted to start right away, after spring break. So did Jenny and Rhoda. So the three families took the plunge together.

So here Sandy found herself, driving Ellie to school.

“Mommy, I know you and daddy worked so hard all those years.” Her small hand patted on Sandy’s shoulder, sending a shiver of affection down her back. “And I know it wasn’t easy. I feel so ready for today because of all you both did for me. I’ll never be able to thank you.”

Any remaining sting disappeared, erased by a jolt of pride. Ellie had always been mature beyond her years, both in her studies, making friends, and in expressing herself emotionally. She and Will were in awe of their daughter.

The car inched forward in line.

“There’s Angus,” Ellie said, as a gangly 13-year old boy from down the street walked along the sidewalk next to them, hunched from the weight of a full backpack. Two other boys walked with him.

“Hey Angus!” she yelled out, knocking on the door.

He waved back, smiling.

Sandy’s nerves fired up again. Except for her cousins, Ellie had never interacted much with boys. Plus, Angus’s parents had always struck Sandy as odd. And from all the signs in their yards last year, definitely liberals. They’d lost last year and were probably bitter about it like so many others. As Will said, they needed to move on.

Sandy squeezed the steering wheel to calm herself.

Ellie’s a great kid. She’s mature. She’s strong. She’ll be fine.

It was the pep talk Will had given her last night, and the night before that, and all week before that.

This was going to be OK. Ellie was happy, and that’s what mattered most. And there was no way they could’ve held her back any longer. Not without deep damage to their relationship.

Sandy turned the corner into the school driveway and pulled to a stop.

“Here you go, love,” she said. “First day of school. Enjoy it”

Ellie leaned forward across the center console and gave Sandy a kiss on her cheek.

“I will Mommy. Thank you again. Love you.”

She scooted to the right side of the car and hopped out.

Sandy watched as she bounded to the open double doors of the school, surrounded by a flood of kids of all shapes and sized, then disappeared.

Jenny and Rhoda were nowhere in sight, but Ellie couldn’t have cared less.

She was ready. And raring to go.

Sandy pulled away.

Sobbing.

Watching her daughter stroll away so confidently filled her with pride and broke her heart at the same time. They’d done well as a home school family. For seven years. Still, her little girl was growing up so fast. And in this new school, it was about to go so much faster.

At the same time, this was part of freedom.

As the president said, their new freedom.

Will and she had agreed to that last night too.

Author’s Note:

A boiler-plate element of Donald Trump’s current stump speech is his promise “to cut funding to schools with vaccine requirements.”

As he told a crowd in Wisconsin, in June: “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.”

He used the same words in Virginia in March, and again in May (you can watch the video of him HERE),

Months ago, a Trump spokesperson told a reporter that Trump was only referring to the COVID vaccine.

But Trump himself has never made that distinction. And nor do the voters he is trying to woo away from Robert Kennedy—whom he now attacks for “not being anti-vaccine enough.”

As the New York Times wrote: “Anti-vaccine sentiment has shaped [Trump’s] campaign, as well as the kind of president that his supporters would like him to be, should he win. Right now, Trump appears to be taking careful steps to ensure that he doesn’t lose any of them to the decidedly anti-vax Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent and who has attacked Trump over his handling of the pandemic.”

Experts are clear about the risks of what Trump is pushing: “Public health experts say a White House opposed to immunization mandates could potentially cause upticks in cases of measles, polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases, or hamper efforts to fight a future pandemic.”